screenplays

A writer should probably enter a film festival to advance her career, meet people in the business, hopefully add an official selection logo to her resume. But I confess: I entered the Oaxaca International Film Festival because I saw that the trophies for best film and best screenplay were statues by Alejandro Santiago — my favorite living artist ever.

I am not alone in this opinion. According to the director of the Oaxaca International Film Festival, Ramiz Adeeb Azar, the Mexican government asked Alejandro Santiago to sign papers saying it’s okay to put his face on money or stamps after he’s dead. (Diego and Frida are on the five-hundred peso note now.)

I first read about Alejandro Santiago in Raw Vision – an outsider art magazine that celebrates the likes of Thornton Dial and Sam Doyle. I found it a little strange, as if simply because he’s from a small village in Oaxaca, Santiago is somehow an outsider. I can’t think of anyone more connected to his art, to his culture or to the human condition. Consider the seven-year project that vaulted him to fame. He came back to Mexico from living and painting in France and found his entire village empty of men. That’s the flip side of the immigration story we hear in the United States. Women and children hanging onto the thread of hope that their men will make it safely to the other side and someday return.

There are no less than three documentaries you can watch about the project, http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/2501_Migrants_A_Journey/70147461?trkid=2361637 but the art-world narrative goes like this: Alejandro Santiago had a dream, and in that dream he repopulated his village. The way he made it whole again was to acknowledge the absence. Seven years and a million dollars later there were 2,500 statues representing the migrants, plus one – himself. There were exhibits along the Mexico/U.S. border – all 2501 figures facing Mexico, yearning, and later in museums and galleries around the world.

The story wormed into my heart and never left. My own childhood was so nomadic that I’ve never felt the rootedness of Santiago’s “migrantes.” For years I’ve tried to see them. It became almost a pilgrimage. Gary and I have visited Oaxaca six times, combing through its world-class galleries, even renting a car to try to drive to the village where Santiago made the statues. But it turns out maps in Mexico are as abstract as its contemporary art. We found other works by Santiago — fantastic, unforgettable drawings and paintings I’ll never be able to afford – but not the migrantes. What we found instead was an entire culture of artistic expression, an explosion of stories put down in clay, on canvass and spray painted on the walls of Oaxaca in protest. I realize now that Mexico was making me pay my dues – when the student is ready the teacher will come.

Migrantes, by Alejandro Santiago

Thanks to the Oaxaca International Film Festival, I am closer than ever. On the mornings before the film screenings began, we wandered Oaxaca’s museums again and found a group of Santiago’s migrantes finally on public display. I stood as still as the statues, suppressing the urge to touch them.

And then, on the last day of festival, Ramiz and his wife Diana invited us to a special screening at the artist’s home. As if making the trophies wasn’t enough, Alejandro Santiago opened his own home for a kid’s night – spreading out straw palapa mats on the ground and projecting all the winning animated films on a white courtyard wall. Seeing more migrantes there, in the humble outskirts of Oaxaca where Santiago still lives with his wife and children and seamstress mother, is something I’ll never forget. They appear to be walking out of a jungle. They stand in silhouette atop a corner of an adobe wall. I realize how deeply he must still feel their absence to surround himself with the presence he willed into existence. Which is only a fraction of how deeply their absence must be felt in families all across Mexico – sons, uncles, fathers and husbands offered up, prayed over, ached for.

Someday, when I’m more experienced and worldly, I’ll have an elegant speech prepared in the event of winning a major award. I was thrilled to win best screenplay for “Mask of the Innocent” and ecstatic that my first big festival win was for a female-lead thriller set in Mexico. But on Saturday night, on the stage of the beautiful Teatro Juarez, I didn’t say any of that. I was holding a piece of the Mexico I have come to love.

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While I’m waiting to hear back from producers who requested to read my R-rated comedy “Free Corona,” I keep tweaking the screenplay. All writing is re-writing — I know this — I’m just not as sure when it comes to jokes.

I’m pretty confident most of the scenes in “Free Corona” are funny. Either that or the 14 people who staged a table read at my house are easily bribed. Full disclosure: there were gin and tonics; this is the Deep South. And I did promise everyone a dip in the creek when we got through. But here’s why I think the laughs were earned honestly: one joke completely choked.

Bruce Doneff – a PR exec who does Shakespeare on the side, was gamely reading the parts of four horny old retirees. At one point near the end of the second act, they try to shame a hapless maintenance man into admitting that he’s knocked up the girl, Corona, they all drool over. The dialog went like this:

Herb: It wasn’t me, that’s all I know.
(He pretends to stroke a bulging stomach.)
Herb: Big bee like mine would make a much bigger sting.

Bruce tried reading it one way, then another, using different pacing, until the whole room was rolling with laughter. The unintended kind that gives writers nightmares. He finally gave up.

“What the hell am I supposed to be saying here?” His glasses slid down his nose. I got the “honey this doesn’t work” look loud and clear.

I tried to explain. I really did hear this joke, out of the mouth of a Beaufort judge. Only it was in the 90s, and it was at a hot-tub party (no lie) and gossip had turned to how hugely pregnant a mutual friend looked.

The judge said, “Oh that’s nothing. You should have seen my wife when she was pregnant.” His wife was a little Southern belle, hard to picture hugely pregnant. So he clarified. “Guess it just goes to show. The bigger the stinger the bigger the bee sting.”

I still think that’s funny (I can’t speak for his now ex-wife) But where the joke died was in the re-write. I backed into it, got the timing tangled, basically butchered it by trying to steal it.
Hmmm…there’s a lesson in there somewhere. I’m just not sure if it’s for me or the judge.

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November seems to be one of those wait and see months. The kind where emails languish, entries dangle and decisions loom larger than life. As a kid I hated surprises, so it’s not surprising that waiting to find out if an editor likes a manuscript, or if a producer likes a screenplay is driving me crazy. I want to get in there and convince them, play an active role in my future. I’m type A — this leaving it up to fate is for the birds.

I should have more patience. Byrne did. At least with the literary world. She waited patiently for the publishing world to discover Duncan all of their married life, almost sixty years. In their early years of marriage, one would work a pay-the-bills job while the other followed their artistic dream. It’s romantic, but not particularly encouraging since Duncan died unpublished. Gary and I burned his rejection letters in our firepit to avoid bad ju-ju in the house where I now slave over the written word, but even that doesn’t seem to help when the economy is tanking and the publishing/movie world wants only the sure thing.

What I do find hope in is this photo. Byrne and Duncan’s love lasted longer than any external validation. The grins on their faces are proof of the simple joy they found in each other and something I am incredibly lucky to have in common with Byrne. A man who is my champion. My believer. And one who makes me laugh when I would otherwise sulk.